The Tell-Tale Idol
by wintryone
Summary: This one-shot is loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's "A Tell-Tale Heart", in response to Marina Boccuzzi's Funalis Challenge. A twist on what transpired between Meredith and the Ancient Lyrium Idol. Slightly AU. Warning: Character deaths.


_A/N My first DA "horror" story was written in response to Marina Boccuzzi's Funalis challenge. Thanks Marina, it was a lot of fun! _

_I hope you enjoy!_

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TRUE! - I am outraged, very, very dreadfully outraged; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The lyrium has sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was my sense of acute hearing. I heard all things in the heavens and in the fade. I heard many things in the void. How then am I mad? LISTEN! - and observe how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to remember how I first came to have knowledge of the idol. As Knight Commander, I heard most of what transpired in this wretched city. Yet once I learned of it, the thought of the idol haunted me day and night. They all think me power-hungry, but power was never my object or my desire. I loved the people of Kirkwall and only wanted to protect them from the blight of magic. The most difficult part of my role was, however, how my blood ran cold whenever I was in the presence of a mage, and of course they were never far from me in the Gallows. They were like vultures, picking at our corpses long before we were dead. In my heart I knew the idol was the answer I'd sought for so long, and after I purchased it from that dwarf, by degrees and very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of every mage in they city – especially one particular mage by the name of Marian Hawke.

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. The mad know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded - with what caution - with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I put my plan into action. I had the idol melted down and fashioned into a sword of great power and might. It was a thing of beauty, a perfect antidote to the heinous magic that surrounded me. As I passed by the mages in the courtyard, even the Tranquil would cower and turn from me, such was its power. Every night around midnight I would pass by the mages cells with the scarlet glow of my sword lighting my way. I moved slowly, very slowly so as not to disturb their sleep, but I surely infected their dreams; the groans that echoed through the stone hallways would have made you laugh. Would a madwoman have been so wise as this?

This I did for seven long nights, every night just at midnight, but I found that their groans were no longer enough, for it was not the mages themselves that vexed me, but their evil magic. Every morning, when the day broke, I moved boldly through my duties, addressing them by their names in a hearty tone, and inquiring how they had passed the night. You see how cleverly I avoided suspicion?

I mentioned how my senses had increased and it was about this time that I began to hear the singing. Perhaps I had always heard it, but now the music began to take shape in my mind, and although the words remained just beyond the grasp of my understanding, I knew what I must do.

Upon the eighth night, I took a boat from the Gallows to Hightown.

I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph as I paced the square of earth beneath the Champion's open window. I listened to her soft gasps and moans as I directed the energy of the sword to where she lay abed sleeping. I fairly chuckled at the idea of the nightmares I was causing, and perhaps she heard me, because I barely escaped notice as her lithe figure came to the window to inspect the garden below. The thick darkness hid me well on that moonless night, and after I time she withdrew. Patiently I waited, and then steadily I resumed my task. Many times I desired to leave that night, but my singing sword insisted I stay. I returned to the Gallows at daybreak, weary beyond ken.

I am not mad – surely not, but that was truly the last night of which I have clear memory. The singing grew so loud, it overpowered the rest of my senses. So it was that I when I awoke each morning thereafter, and received the news of horrible murders in the night, I led the investigations myself.

What deaths, you ask?

The first death was Cullen, my Knight Captain, found decapitated in the Gallows Chapel; his body still kneeling in prayer while his head lay several feet away, an expression of horrified surprise etched upon the once handsome visage.

We searched all the day, but found no trace of the murdering fiend who had taken the life of this once proud Templar. Cullen had been a good man despite his sympathetic weakness. I blamed that weakness on Hawke, who I saw bending his ear many a day while he stood watch in the courtyard.

_Hawke_. If only I could awake one morning to learn of her death – but, no, no. I wanted to take her life myself, of that I was sure.

The next morning, Orsino's corpse was found – or at least pieces of him were discovered scattered throughout the Gallows. We found a foot tucked in among the potions at Solitivus' shop, and a hand shoved under the desk in Orsino's office. Two toes showed up in the morning's breakfast gruel, and his mangled head was found behind one of the slave statues, with both of his long, knife-like ears missing. The oddest part was that his body, found in an old storage room, was cleaved from stern to groin, and his heart was missing.

I rubbed at my stained lips as I returned to my office, the remembrance of a coppery taste filling my mouth. There was something… but the beautiful singing filled my head and calmed my heart, reminding me that I was not mad; that all was well.

Several more deaths of less consequence followed, until on the sixth morning after the killings began, the news that greeted me upon awakening was horrid beyond imagining.

Grand Cleric Elthina was dead. Some fiend had flayed her flesh into ribbons and hung her bloody corpse from Andraste's outstretched hand, in the very heart of the Chantry. The wailing of that prince, the one from Starkhaven, nearly drowned out my beautiful singing, and I had to leave quickly and allow the others to continue the investigation.

No, I am not mad. Have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?

I began to think that I should seek out the Champion now, before this unknown murderer could get to her. I needed to do the deed myself. I have known many, many mages in my day – including my own sister – but never have I felt such power as from Marian Hawke. She must be eradicated, I thought, and it must be by my own perfect blade. Perhaps then I could finally put the nightmares of my sister, the abomination, to rest.

That night I did not retire to my chambers as usual, but instead equipped myself for battle, intent on going to Hightown and removing the threat of Hawke once and for all. Do you mistake this for madness? I tell you, I insist you believe me, that it was for the good of all that I undertook this task. If only I had known…

As I approached the docks, a group was disembarking from a boat recently moored. I could feel her well before I could make out her features - and as she saw me and lifted her staff, she seemed to glow brightly with an aura bluer than the bluest spring sky. Behind her shadowy figures stepped onto the stones of the Gallows, but I could only see Hawke. The singing in my head roared to increased life, the volume causing my ears and nose to burn as if afire. I felt a warmth on my lips, and my fingers came away bloody when I tested the skin there.

"Meredith," said Hawke in a voice as hard as tempered steel.

"Champion," I drawled, but could scarcely hear my own voice above the singing. "Come to meet your doom at last?"

"You are a mad dog, Meredith," she said in a voice that boomed throughout the courtyard, "and must be put down."

I laughed then, and my singing sword picked up the sound and amplified it. I saw the Champion wince, and drew the sword from my back. "Try me," was all I said.

I heard another voice, then - a raspy voice filled with fear and wonder. "Hawke," the voice said, "do you hear singing?"

"Not now, Varric," said the Champion as she swung her staff and a wall of ice engulfed me.

"Maker give me strength to fight this evil!" I shouted and my blade sliced through the ice and shattered it as easily as if it were made of paper. I advanced on Hawke, my blade shining scarlet in the dark night. She parried with a shock of energy that slowed, but did not halt me. My blade missed her by inches. "Blessed are those that stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter!" I roared.

"It is you who are corrupt," screamed Hawke as she let forth a volley of lightning from her staff. "You slaughter your own in the name of righteousness!"

I easily dodged her attack and swung low with my blade, but the Champion was quick and leapt aside in the knick of time.

The fight went on for some time, and although I was able to land several blows, each time I did, healing energy enveloped the Champion from the shadows behind the pillars. Though her friends did not enter the fray, one of them at least was aiding her cause: The cause of evil – the tainted cause of mages who would control us all!

"I will avenge you Elthina, dear friend!" I said, but at that moment, I felt a savage burn shoot up my arm from my own sword. I staggered and nearly dropped it. What was happening?

"You are mad!" shouted Hawke. "Do you truly not know that it was your own hand that killed the Grand Cleric?" A crushing white-hot energy left Hawke's staff and enveloped me, and I fell to my knees.

"You lie!" I retorted. "I would not.."

"And your own Knight Captain, beheaded in the most cruel way, in the very heart of the Gallows!" the Champion continued.

"No! Never!" I said, but my voice was hardly above a whisper, as the singing grew ever louder in my mind, the burn in my arm shot down into my torso and I screamed.

"Wait, Hawke!" came that raspy voice again, and I saw as the Champion stilled her hand and watched me in shocked horror.

What was happening? What was this terrible searing pain? I found I could no longer move; I was paralyzed and not by the Champion's magic. Something else was at work here, and it was then that I finally understood the singing and I felt my heart go cold, despite the burning of my flesh.

"_Purify with fire. Purify with blood. Eat their souls and feed us, destroy their flesh and nourish us. Purify with fire. Purify with blood..."_

Suddenly I understood. I _had_ killed them. _I had killed them all_.

I did not, however, regret their deaths. I did not regret any of it.

I tell you that I am not mad. Did I not tell my story with candor and clarity? That ancient lyrium idol allowed me to think and see clearly, for the first time in my life.

They all must think me dead now, caught as I am in this red prison of burning pain. But I see them, I watch them, and I feel the evil of their corrupted magic. Someday the music will free me and I will destroy the plague of magic from the face of Thedas.

Someday I will have my revenge…

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